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Hey guys, I work for a Japanese video game company. I do some 3D modelling work when there are projects, but we're a work for hire company mostly and we're dealing in domestic games, a lot of 2D stuff or porting of stuff, so there's not always a lot of 3D work needed. In the time im not doing 3D work, I help test bugs, and as I'm the only guy who speaks English at the company, sort out contracts and try to get us more work with companies abroad. Its with this in mind that we're starting to branch out and start bringing foreign games to Japan and expand services within Japan, porting to other consoles, etc. iOS to VITA or something like that. We went to TGS and there were a lot of mobile game developers, but as to be expected from TGS, it was mostly domestic. We're looking to go abroad and network with businesses in America and the UK and I'm wondering which expos in Europe or America are best for business networking. As a developer and a modeler i'm very interested in GDC, I've never been (I'm British), and think it would help me personally, but I'm not sure if its the correct venue to be going to, in the hopes of checking new games and potentially forging friendships with companies or offering our services to them. What do you think? What expo from a business standpoint makes sense to go to? What about E3? Or the expo in Europe?
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Oct 3, 2012 09:09
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I would say SIGGRAPH. GDC is supposed to be better than E3 but things have changed a lot over the years. Can anyone tell me if there is anything like this for Maya?
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Oct 3, 2012 09:14
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sigma 6 posted:I would say SIGGRAPH. GDC is supposed to be better than E3 but things have changed a lot over the years. SIGGRAPH isn't principally a game conference? Whereas GDC is literally a developer-centric conference where a number of business deals are done every day? GDC is primarily a business-to-business conference, with E3 being a business-to-consumer conference but still a place where a ton of developers are. SIGGRAPH is focused on the entire 3d community at large. GDC and then E3 are probably your best bets for finding US developers (They attract international people as well obviously, but if you're chasing a specific country/market that isn't the US you might possibly do better elsewhere). There is a game jobs thread in the Games forum that would probably give you better answers than this general 3d thread. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3415662
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Oct 3, 2012 09:42
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concerned mom posted:To make them watertight?
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Oct 3, 2012 19:25
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That's even worse. Why make low poly watertight, it's a waste of triangles unless you're working on an engine that needs watertight and pretty much none of them do! He *might* be trying to teach you the correct way to weld and cut vertices so they display right, but frankly its the wrong way to show you if he is.
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Oct 3, 2012 19:34
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It could also be for practice - you'd get pretty quick at shifting verts around without breaking the shape if you did that on all your early stuff. When doing bigger projects you don't have to, but it would help you work faster in the long run when you get quick at it.
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Oct 3, 2012 19:38
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concerned mom posted:That's even worse. Why make low poly watertight, it's a waste of triangles unless you're working on an engine that needs watertight and pretty much none of them do! He *might* be trying to teach you the correct way to weld and cut vertices so they display right, but frankly its the wrong way to show you if he is.
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Oct 3, 2012 22:09
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I wouldn't worry about your portfolio right now, it's very much a learning process. Cubicle could definitely be right, it could be to teach you stuff that isn't immediately obvious. It might be worth sort of covertly asking him.
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Oct 3, 2012 22:14
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That's one reason why I'm glad I learned modeling in a film program. It taught me a lot of neatness things that I'm both glad I know and glad when I can ignore them in games modeling.
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Oct 3, 2012 23:29
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Hey guys, I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to model the pages of a book like this in 3DS Max: This is a much older book than what I have in mind, I need mine to look freshly printed with maybe a folded corner or something. Anything pointing me in the right direction would be real helpful  I need it to be geometry because I'm going to be doing very, very close renders of a project I worked on.
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Oct 5, 2012 05:26
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What problems are you running into? I'd model the bulk of the pages as a solid block with a flattened noise map for displacing the outside edge (i.e. something scaled 1, 1, 0.01) to simulate pages, then put a few planes on top for the lifted up pages.
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Oct 5, 2012 05:33
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SynthOrange posted:What problems are you running into? I'd model the bulk of the pages as a solid block with a flattened noise map for displacing the outside edge (i.e. something scaled 1, 1, 0.01) to simulate pages, then put a few planes on top for the lifted up pages. Well I was trying to model the whole thing with geometry but I think I might have to give up on that pipe dream. I think the noise map idea will help a lot, thanks!
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Oct 5, 2012 05:37
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 Here's a quick test I whipped up, turning off edge smoothing. That's just a flattened block with a lot of height subdivisions, and slight x and z noise. I mean you could model every single page and stack them and use flattened noise again on the edges to simulate some roughness, but unless you need to turn every single page, that seems excessive.
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Oct 5, 2012 05:45
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That's much better than what I had going, I'll keep plugging away, thanks 
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Oct 5, 2012 05:54
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As for the loose top pages, most 3d packages will also have some sort of extrude or thickness modifier, so you can just model the pages as flat planes and give them a tiny bit of thickness with those, rather than trying to manipulate a whole bunch of closely placed, very flat blocks.
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Oct 5, 2012 05:59
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SynthOrange posted:As for the loose top pages, most 3d packages will also have some sort of extrude or thickness modifier, so you can just model the pages as flat planes and give them a tiny bit of thickness with those, rather than trying to manipulate a whole bunch of closely placed, very flat blocks. Yeah I was using Splines and Loft to get the loose pages to look right but they weren't very 'bendable' so I'll probably just switch to straight planes.
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Oct 5, 2012 06:06
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You could try an editable patch in max, gives you poly like elements with nice bezier handles for making curvy things. Nobody uses them much but I find them useful for certain things
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Oct 5, 2012 11:19
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Just saw this the other night and it wasn't bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhaT78i1x2M A lot of talking heads / dry doc stuff but overall pretty inspirational. Only just made my first game for the SA gamedev contest recently and won a "most innovative" prize (yay!). Generally, I prefer the VFX side of things, but I grew up with a NES too and spent wayyy too much time beating the classics. Only stopped gaming when I started making 3d my fulltime job. In any case, I wanted to ask you guys a very serious question: Art Institute (who just laid off a TON of people - 65% of its teaching staff in one instance) has decided in its Goldman Sach's wisdom to remove Zbrush from the curriculum. The word on high is that the entire school system is switching to mudbox instead, despite already having the (lifetime) zbrush licenses in a lot schools. Can someone give me some advice how to reverse this? Already emailed someone at pixologic about it, since I figure AI is a pretty huge client to lose. It really blows that ALL Art Institute students are about to robbed of zbrush due to some corporate decision to save money, or make it easier on IT.
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Oct 5, 2012 17:31
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sigma 6 posted:due to some corporate decision to save money, or make it easier on IT. If they already use max, maya or xsi then the figures involved in this might be astronomical. Autodesk reps pretty much handed out copies of autocad to students before it was in major use, meaning when they graduated everyone who employed them ended up using autocad. It's a great way to increase future sales to firms and they're pretty aggressive about it. cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Oct 5, 2012 |
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Oct 5, 2012 19:59
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Yeah. I think they get the autodesk educational suite, which is very cheap. I imagine in bulk even more so. Add to that, a lot of people coming from an autodesk background find mudbox much easier to use than zbrush. It is harder to find teachers who teach zbrush, AND zbrush certification still hasn't rolled out. Apparently, IT also has problems with licensing because of lack of network licensing capabilities. So because of this, they have to license each workstation individually. That last part I am not sure about though.
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Oct 5, 2012 20:21
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Haha.. I had to do some of that this year [papers + books] For books I'd do do a bunch of individually modeled papers,clone them then shuffle around each sheet. If it's always open and a few pages are turning you can specifically model out and texture the hero pages, and the rest can be treated as a rough paper lump. I had a do a few dozen flying paper/book paper and flipping paper shots, and I used houdini to procedurally generate and animate everything. I took 4 sheets of hero paper, modelled with slight thickness with slight size variations and unique textures and cloned/copy stamped the heck out of them. Actually if anyone is interested I can do a little workflow demo with a hip file for houdini folks you can probably replicate the setup in max or maya. Big K of Justice fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Oct 5, 2012 |
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Oct 5, 2012 20:45
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I would like to see it. Still new to houdini, but always willing to learn.
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Oct 5, 2012 21:37
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Re: Zbrush I'm sure that autodesk can be more friendly to large studios/organizations. I find some designers like zbrush over mudbox and vice versa, but at most of the studios I've worked at over the years, mudbox fit in better into the pipeline, and it was easier to grab the ear of autodesk if you needed a rapid bug fix or custom development. Shell out enough $$$$$$ on support and you can get man months of development support on a tool or bugfix thats high priority. The feeling I got from the much smaller team at pixelogic is harder to get them to do custom development or high priority bug fixes... thats what I've heard but I don't have personal experience with pixelogic. That may not be the case for education but autodesk could have went "hey free software and support"... .
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Oct 6, 2012 01:45
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sigma 6 posted:Apparently, IT also has problems with licensing because of lack of network licensing capabilities. So because of this, they have to license each workstation individually. That last part I am not sure about though. We have quite a heavy zbrush install here and historically that was true - every license was registered centrally based on a hardware ID with Pixologic's servers, meaning when an artist had a workstation replaced you could potentially run into nasty cases of "no more activations" - I remember our license situation was an absolute mess for the games division, who mostly use it. On the plus side, the latest release supports a centralized license server internally with floating licenses. If I recall correctly, you need a minimum purchase of ten seats, but after that you're good. We've still not rolled that out as we (read as: I) are terrible at IT...
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Oct 6, 2012 02:08
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sigma 6 posted:Just saw this the other night and it wasn't bad. Wait, do you teach at AI-somewhere now instead of Westwood? Belated congrats on the upgrade!
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Oct 6, 2012 04:26
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Most of the really amazing stuff I see sculpted is done with ZBrush. They've also got much more presence on the web than Mudbox work. I've used both, and Zbrush definitely has Mudbox beat for features, and produces better normal maps. Also the plugins like UV Master are amazing. I'd also be interested in seeing that "book creation" with Houdini thing. I use Maya and might have to do something like that one day, so it'd be helpful to know how.
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Oct 6, 2012 06:13
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Sigma-X: Thanks. I work at two now actually but I don't consider it that much of an upgrade. I suspect most for profit schools all operate more or less the same way. dotalchemy: Didn't know they offered any network licensing at all. I am sure the school has more than ten seats. Good to know. Geared Hub: I think Mudbox was designed as Autodesk's (Skymatter's) answer to zbrush. Historically, they have always been playing catch up to Zbrush features. The only thing I really prefer Mudbox for is texturing, but even that is just a matter of taste. Ccs: Not sure if I agree about the normal map thing. Xnormal has worked better for me recently, although Paul Gaboury told me "Zmapper is not coming back, zbrush's normal maps are fine, and they would rather focus on other features." Check out the SIGGRAPH videos here for some of the new zbrush features. Danny Williams and Paul Gaboury are both very nice guys and it is always fun to watch them demo.
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Oct 7, 2012 01:20
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sigma 6 posted:
Autodesk didn't design Mudbox. It was made by some guys from Weta who saw a need for it and then bought by Autodesk. Fun fact: I was in the grad program at Mississippi State with one of the founders, Andrew Camenisch!
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Oct 7, 2012 02:27
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Mudbox seems like very sensible upgrades, gradual improvements to features and well rounded usage. Zbrush keeps pulling out hilariously weird and unexpected poo poo every time there's a major upgrade and its always amazing to watch.
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Oct 7, 2012 02:39
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As somebody who has a love/hate relationship with ZBrush, there is no way I could do the job I do as a Character Artist with Mudbox unless I liked being in Maya/Max all the time. Luckily with ZBrush I almost never have to go into Maya, and thank god for that because the modeling tools in Maya fuckin suck. Considering Mudbox an upgrade coming from ZBrush is pretty naive in my opinion. There are just so many things you can do as an actual modeling program in ZBrush that you just can't do in Mudbox. Art Institutes aren't know for being smart schools, just smart businesses that only want their students money and most don't give a poo poo about the success of the students. And if they do want them to be successful it's so they can bring them back and do lovely fuckin commercials about how if they didn't go to Art Institute they wouldn't be a professional or some poo poo. Edit: I'm not talking about the instructors. I've heard of good instructors at AI schools. I'm talking about AI as a business and private school as a whole and their intentions. ceebee fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Oct 7, 2012 |
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Oct 7, 2012 03:00
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Bookchat. I recently had to animate fast flipping pages on a book rig which didn't let me copy/paste keys. 
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Oct 7, 2012 04:13
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tuna posted:Bookchat. I recently had to animate fast flipping pages on a book rig which didn't let me copy/paste keys.  Okay so I figured out that part of my problem was that my 'studio' setup scene I have for test rendering models somehow had all the lights set to normal shadow map instead of ray-traced so everything was really flat and dull, AKA I am an idiot. It's been a long time since I've done anything in 3D (stuck in a web design job for a long time) so I'm rusty as all hell. I'm trying to put together a portfolio of my print work without spending a fortune on Large Format printing which is why this whole thing is happening. Could I get some critique on these?   Full album here.
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Oct 7, 2012 23:14
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The presentation is a bit odd. If you're going to use these as portfolio pieces for your 3d work, you should just do straight prints and enlargements of detail, rather than photos of prints hung in a gallery setting. That could really confuse the issue, and you might end up getting questions about how you modelled the clips or went about DOF, etc. 
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Oct 7, 2012 23:41
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SynthOrange posted:The presentation is a bit odd. If you're going to use these as portfolio pieces for your 3d work, you should just do straight prints and enlargements of detail, rather than photos of prints hung in a gallery setting. That could really confuse the issue, and you might end up getting questions about how you modelled the clips or went about DOF, etc. They aren't portfolio pieces for my 3D work, they're for my print work. A lot of my stuff is large (24x36"+) posters and whatnot and it's expensive to print, hang and photograph this stuff so I'm trying to use my (limited) 3D skills to save some money. I'm using DoF and other effects to hide my modelling skills
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Oct 8, 2012 00:21
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Oh, in that case, I've certainly seen worse print portfolios. To be honest I never got the point of these kind of shots unless you're going for a position where you'll be producing stuff like this. Mockups of how they're actually going to be used just seem far more useful to me in a portfolio.
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Oct 8, 2012 00:39
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SynthOrange posted:Oh, in that case, I've certainly seen worse print portfolios. Well that's exactly it, I work a lot in print media so most of my work gets printed on the clients dime. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff that agencies like to gawk at and hire you for is not the kind of stuff clients want so you end up stuck between a rock and a hard place. You need to show that you have the ability to carry something from concept through to print, but 90% of the stuff you've done this for is not really spectacular portfolio material and dropping $100+ dollars printing and mounting each poster/billboard adds up quickly. Anyway, sorry if I'm annoying anyone with ~*Design Chat*~, I appreciate the help
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Oct 8, 2012 02:21
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Now that I'm looking closer, the only things that bother me are in the mechaburger piece. You've probably overdone the paper texture a bit, and the paper clips arent casting any shadows or AO. I didnt spot the fact that it was a 3d render in the Kid A piece, so you've fooled me there!
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Oct 8, 2012 04:31
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Try and avoid full white for stuff like that, it's whats making the edges of the burger one look fake. pull it back to 230 or so instead of 255. A good general rule is to never use full white in CG, it fucks with gi and recieving shadows too much. The 2 kid a shots you posted in this thread are the only ones i'd show as-is though, the rest need a little work. I like the method overall though
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Oct 8, 2012 14:06
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cubicle gangster posted:Try and avoid full white for stuff like that, it's whats making the edges of the burger one look fake. pull it back to 230 or so instead of 255. A good general rule is to never use full white in CG, it fucks with gi and recieving shadows too much. Interesting, I'll pull the curves in Photoshop, thanks!
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Oct 8, 2012 17:17
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Sorry about the lack of Houdini goodness this past weekened. My License expired and I had to wait until today to get it renewed...
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Oct 8, 2012 20:35
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